cfair

Gang,
My Norwegian grandfather collected stamps his whole life from 1905-1989. Some got passed along to my Mom 1936-2024 after he passed away. Then _she_ passed away in February of this year.

My sister & I are trying to figure out what to do with them. Probably 20lbs of binders & stamps from all over the world from say 1890 - 1980 or so. The stamps are in binders, as was the custom, and not in any big display sort of thing.

Of possible interest are First Day Covers mostly from Norway. Also some interesting stamps from various countries that either no longer exist or were, well, notorious - (**** Germany 1933-1945). USA, Phillippines, Germany, Norway, UK, etc, etc.

If any of you might be philatelists, can you make recommendations on what we might do to preserve the collection, likely not of high value, or maybe so. 30 years ago, a collector my Dad knew concluded it wasn't anything super special, but that may have changed since 1990.

I'd mostly like this stuff to go to a good home, not really trying to score big money, but if it can be used/preserved for others to enjoy, I'm open.

Equally, if there are stamps of value, seems silly to let it go for $0.00...

Do any of you have recommendations?

Many thanks in advance
Chris

Supernice88

You might be able to donate it to the Library of Congress to be part of their digital collection. https://www.loc.gov/collections/
Sorry for your loss.

Koda

Just like there are websites for oldsmobiles, there are websites for stamps. I would join a stamp collecting forum and not say "hey I want to value and sell off my granddad's stuff" because then the vultures will come out. Ideally, you will learn of a stamp encyclopedia which has them valued, and you can look up yours, then try to sell them for near that. Also, just like here, the ads for "my whole gigantic lot of stuff, buyer must buy all" go for significantly less than piecemeal totalled and the seller often gets hurt feelings when they realize that no one really wants an entire collection of stuff, they just want parts of it, and they'll only buy the whole thing if it is a really great deal to compensate for the hassle of dealing with it.

In other words, selling stuff and getting good money out of it takes work. On the one hand, already discussed, is the "take it all, just give me something for it, I'm not in this hobby" view, and on the other hand are guys like some of our guys in the sales forum here, patiently bumping things every month for 3 years and not willing to take a dime less than the price they have chosen. Got to decide if you want to put in work for top dollar, or just want it gone for something.

Koda

Also, losing your mom is hard. My condolences.

jaunty75

My grandfather was an avid stamp and coin collector all his life. When his collection finally came to me after he and his wife passed away, I put it away for a number of years and then decided to take it out of storage and see what it was worth. This was maybe a decade ago now. There was a stamp show in the local convention center, and I took it to several of the vendors for an opinion. They all said the same thing. They'd give me $10 for the lot. I wasn't surprised. The stamps were mostly used that he had cut from envelopes, but there were many that he had gotten new, including a number of foreign stamps and some 1920s-era air mail stamps. But there was nothing there I was going to sell and retire on. I decided to just sell the collection to one of them and let them add them to their stock to sell to people who might want to get into the hobby.

I'd guess the collection will have mostly sentimental value for you. But, if you want to see what it's worth, do what I did or take it to some stamp shops and see what they say.

joes_olds

I think it might be very time consuming to try and value this collection on your own. A lot of stamps are valuable due some misprint that is difficult for most people to see. It might be worth going to a stamp shop and paying them to evaluate the collection since this is an old and presumably larger collection.

That being said, I use an app on my phone that scans your stamp one at a time and attempts to match to known items, I think it's called World Stamp. There are others available too. I haven't used it enough to say how great it is or if others are better or worse.

If you find something, post it here, it might help others.

cfair

Gents,
Many thanks for your suggestions. I'm leaning more toward, I'd like to get something out of it, vs. I want top $, but even my vague interest in some economic value takes a back seat to the collection finding a good home, ideally in the family.

My cousin is coming over from Norway in June where the collection was built and may have view on what to do, or perhaps interest in returning to Norway with it. In which case everybody wins.

Thanks also for your condolences, she lived a great life to 87 and passed peacefully, pain-free, about as much as anyone could ask for. I've said to many friends that she had a list of stuff she wanted to do and finished d*mn near all of it. Well played Mom!

Cheers
Chris

PS: Now learning all about estate settlement and ex-post stuff. Big lesson is if 2 siblings can do the work together, it's much better than 1.